Over the past decades, data storage systems have experienced tremendous improvements in areal storage density. This development enabled data storage systems to continually miniaturize and yet provide increased storage capacity. As market demand for smaller form factors persists, data storage manufacturers are continually in search of new technologies to increase storage capacity. In data storage systems where disc-shaped magnetic media are used (e.g. a disc drive), significant advancements have been made to transducer and slider technologies to increase areal density. Such technologies, however, are approaching physical limit.
A further limitation to increasing areal density is the conventional methods of reading and writing operations in a disc drive. A disc-shaped medium is configured to store data in a series of concentric, closely spaced data tracks, each of which is divided into sectors. The medium is generally rotated while a transducer is moved over the medium surface to read or write data. Where a rotary actuator is used to move the transducer, the arcuate path taken by an actuator arm introduces a skew angle between the transducer and the data track due to different axes of rotation between the actuator path and the medium. The skew angle changes according to the radial location of the transducer on the medium. At certain positions on the medium where the skew angle becomes too large, the transducer may read or write an adjacent track. To prevent such occurrences, track pitches at regions near the outer and inner edges have to be increased. Consequently, track density (number of tracks per radial length) and areal density are reduced.
In view of the foregoing, it is desirable to provide a method for increasing storage capacity to overcome the constraints resulting from skew angle phenomena.